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Researchers Beam 230Mb/sec Wireless Internet WIth LEDs

Posted by timothy on from the binded-by-the-light dept.

MikeChino writes "A group of scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have devised a way to encode a visible-frequency wireless signal in light emitted by plain old desklamps and other light fixtures. The team was able to achieve a record-setting data download rate of 230 megabits per second, and they expect to be able to double that speed in the near future. While the regular radio-frequency Wi-Fi most of us use currently is perfectly fine, it does have its flaws — it has a limited bandwidth that confines it to a certain spectrum and if you've ever had someone leech off of your connection, you know that it also leaks through walls. LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides."

4 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Just different ones by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides.

    Nope, instead it'll have a whole range of different ones, such as requiring line of site.

  2. Re:No upsides either by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's a huge upside for linking up video devices though. No interference from the neighbors, no interference from the other room.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  3. Utterly Stupid.... by loose+electron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you really want to use optical communocation you might as well go infrared so you don't need to see it, similar to your TV remote.

    Then you have all the problems (visible light or infrared) of orientation, line of sight and similar.

    Hopefully the creator of this gadget has not quit their day job.

    utterly stupid.

    --
    www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
  4. IrDA died for a good reason. by teh+dave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In case they hadn't noticed, IrDA is dead for a good reason. The fact that the last two versions of it are much faster than Bluetooth (2.x) is irrelevant, it's too much of an inconvenience for most of its potential users in comparison to Bluetooth. It was great before Bluetooth came about and I used the latest versions of it with my old phone because it was much faster than Bluetooth, and I never had a problem with it for that purpose. Most potential users prefer the convenience of Bluetooth though, for obvious reasons. My new phone doesn't have IrDA, and hardly any new phones do, and as far as consumers go, that technology is all but dead. I can see LED networking going the same way.